Tag Archives: objectivism

Just what you’d expect part 872

Our university now has an Objectivist club.  Like all clubs, the Objectivist club puts up fliers to advertise its meetings.  Walking up the stairs yesterday at school I spied their (I have to admit) well-designed and well-placed flier.  What made it so well placed, you see, was that it was right exactly at eye level in the middle of the wall of similar fliers.  On the second floor, the flier was tacked on top of–you cannot make this stuff up–a flier advertising a blood drive.  On the third floor, the flier was tacked on top of a flier advertising a course on homelessness offered in the Department of Social Work.

In another, somewhat related, matter, a former real world star (I'm also not making this up), and current GOP congressman from Wisconsin, Sean Duffy, complained at a town all meeting that he struggles to pay his bills on his 174,000 salary (you can support him here).  Video here.   According to TPM, the congressman also supports cutting public employees' salaries:

Duffy also said that he pays more in health care costs and retirement savings than he did when he was a district attorney before he ran for Congress. That said, Duffy said he'd support the idea of "public employees across the board" taking a compensation cut.

"Let's all join hands together and say 'I'll take a pay decrease, absolutely," Duffy said.

Yes.  Let us all join hands together.  The median income in Polk County is around 50,000.  Some sacrifices are more meaningful than others–wasn't there some Bible story about this?

Duffy, it appears, is not actually inconsistent.  He supports Governor Walker-style cuts for everyone.

Nonetheless, we still might run a tu quoque on him–a subjunctive one.  It might go something like this.  The cash-strapped Duffy might be less likely to see the wisdom in that if he were actually cash-strapped.  He's not, in other words, cash strapped in the relevant way.  He is cash strapped relative to his expenses on a robust salary; he is not cash-strapped relevant to having cash at all.